They look like scenes from a Twilight Zone episode.

But these are photos from another midcentury Hollywood production images staged by everyday people to bring attention to a seriously scary public health crisis.

We often see this golden sort of aura around Los Angeles in the 1940s.

But it doesn't have any real meaning if you have to wear a gas mask to walk down the street.

In the 1950s, air pollution in L.A. was so bad that on some days, it looked like parts of the city had disappeared.

The Los Angeles International Airport shut down because pilots couldn't see the runway and it wasn't safe to fly.

People wheezing, people not being able to see clearly, to breathe clearly.

Kids were kept inside at recess because the acrid air could burn your lungs.

In October of 1954, there's a streak of smog that's so bad that The New York Times reports on it.

People are up in arms about it.

Goes on for about two weeks.

Angelenos were absolutely sick of smog, So they decided to do something about it.

There was a crescendo of public anger.

And that crescendo erupted at Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

About 6000 people were in the audience, and they were frothing at the mouth.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have met here tonight unitedly for one purpose in mind to get some action!

Smog.

This is our only enemy!

The good news was that no one knew how to get the media's attention like the residents of La La Land.

LIFE magazine ran a big article about smog in the land of sunshine.

And the ‘Optimists Club in Los Angeles had a dinner where they donned World War Two-style gas masks.

They had a big banner behind them saying: ‘Why wait for 1955?

We may not be alive.

But that was just the beginning.

Because the constituency the city really couldn't ignore...was moms.

And in late 1958, they took the smog crisis straight on.

An organization was created, one of the early grassroots environmental organizations by a set of ladies in Beverly Hills.

Their organization was called S.O.S.

: “Stamp Out Smog”.

“We started with nine women...” And it was founded by a bunch of unbelievably talented women who, because of the era, weren't employed outside of the home, who took care of their kids and who were enraged about smog.

They were a force no one expected... and they demanded to be reckoned with.

Margaret Levee's husband was a movie producer.

She also had a two-year-old daughter that had really bad that had really bad asthma.

The doctor advised her to leave Los Angeles because of the air quality.

And her response was to say, ‘no, this is crazy.

I'm going to stay here, I'm going to fight and I'm going to do something about it.

The women of S.O.S.

had high powered Hollywood connections, and they understood the power of the media.

They brought their kids frequently to meetings wearing gas masks.

They became a political force that put more pressure on politicians to do something about the problem of smog.

Social media didn't exist that time, but they were able to use phone trees.

They were able to use letter writing campaigns to reach out to politicians to say we have to do something.

They joined forces with something like 400plus organizations.

They gained so much expertise that they actually had credibility to comment about things like technologies that could actually help address the smog problem.

Stamp Out Smog was channeling the anger of citizens against what they were experiencing.

Because of the awareness S.O.S.

created, the government was forced to take action.

California became the first state in the U.S. to implement a statewide pollution control act.

And S.O.S.

mom Margaret Levee helped develop the nation's earliest vehicle emission standards.

And that's why today's L.A. has cleaner air Because this determined group of women fought for it.

There's still a lot of work we need to do to clean up ozone.

Los Angeles continues to have a big air pollution problem, but it's really important to stress that it's orders of magnitude better than what it was.

Los Angeles has not had a smog alert since 2003, which just tells you everything you want to know.

For more on the decades long fight to rid L.A. of smog, check out Clearing the Air from American Experience.